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Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) does not believe the United States' $19.2 trillion national debt is a national security threat. He made the comments during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the strategic implications of the national debt on Wednesday, chaired by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.)

Recently, the public debt crisis in Puerto Rico has sparked widespread discussion about the need for public pension reform. The island territory is already $72 billion in debt, with shortfalls in the public pension fund of up to $30 billion. Without major changes in government spending patterns, Puerto Rico is in danger of becoming insolvent, sending the already brittle economy into a death spiral. While many on the left call for the immediate restructuring of Puerto Rico’s debt, the island’s plight is just the latest example of a state or territory misusing and abusing their public pension system, demonstrating the dire need for reform.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released its updated budget projections, and there's no sugar-coating the numbers. The federal government’s annual budget deficits were already slated to start rising again in 2016, but thanks to some discouraging economic growth predictions and a bloated budget deal that added tens of billions in new spending, we’re now looking at returning to trillion dollar annual deficits in only six years (2022).

Fiscal conservatives have been rightly celebrating the resignation of John Boehner as Speaker of the House, paving the way for new, more principled leadership. But there is a dark side to Boehner’s decision: along with his House seat, he’s also forfeited any accountability that might have reined him in for the remainder of his term. Even now, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and Barack Obama are conspiring to craft a two-year budget deal that would combine a whole slew of big government priorities into one fiendish package.

President Barack Obama drew a line in the sand on budget caps during his weekly address to the country. Citing the latest employment report to argue that the economy has improved, he threatened to veto any budget produced by the Republican-controlled Congress that keeps spending in check.

Recently, the Congressional Budget Office released their Long-Term Budget Outlook for 2015. The official CBO Outlook included some pretty scary figures. The forecast projects the deficit as a percentage of GDP to increase from below 3 percent, to nearly 6 percent in the next twenty-five years. Over the same time frame, the CBO forecasts national debt to increase to over 100 percent of GDP.